Integration and Minorities – Further Thoughts

I was brought up in what was then a northern mill town in the late 60’s and early 70’s. I still remember the view when the whole town seemed to consist of bank upon bank of the huge red brick mills and their tall chimneys, stacked against the side of the Pennine Hills. Even the view from my bedroom was interrupted by a mill.

Having done my best to get out of the town, and done so successfully for most of my life, circumstances recently compelled me to come back to live here. It has changed greatly.

The air is cleaner now, but most of the mills have closed. Quite a few have burned down. There is nothing sinister in this; the buildings are prone to fire if they are not occupied, and as many became abandoned they were targets for vandalism or were easily affected by the effects of a carelessly discarded cigarette or old wiring. Some have been demolished to make way for the inevitable “retail” parks. Others that remain have been converted into storage or little industrial units. A few struggle on.

The town has changed in other ways too. I went to a primary school attached to the Roman Catholic church where my parents had married. The pupils were entirely “white”. Many were themselves the products of immigration and came from Irish stock, or like me, mixed Anglo Irish ancestry, as did my first girlfriend when I was 7, the truly angelic “AB” (she didn’t actually know she was my girlfriend, but I held her hand in the “crocodile” and that was as good as married as far as I was concerned). Incidentally, when it comes to discrimination my parents and grand parents’ generation had their own tales during the depression: “No Irish Need Apply” was a common enough sign.

But I digress. I still remember when we had our first “coloured” pupil (a really nice Indian boy as I recall). More than 35 years on now, the same school is almost exclusively Asian in its ethnic make up, and the town has a very significant Asian population, largely Pakistani and Bangladeshi. More recently there has been an influx of Filipinos and Nigerians. They are often very devout Catholics, as I can attest from the make up of the congregation of the Church on a Sunday morning. I would hazard a guess that about half the congregation is “ethnically non white”. There are also many Poles, of course, who have their own Polish language Mass and who are catered for by the Polish food market just up the road.

I live on the very edge of an area which used to be what I can only describe as having once been the town’s bastion of the “white middle class”; big solid semi detached houses in a prime position. But the middle classes have largely abandoned the centre of the town now, courtesy of a combination of economic depression and, I think, the phenomenon known as “white flight”. This area’s population is now overwhelmingly Asian, although if you cross main the road 50 yards down the street and you will be moving into an area which is markedly “white.”

When it comes to “race relations” mostly people just get along as best they can. At Christmas and at the “Eid” festival gifts are exchanged with the neighbours (Quality Street is a favourite, and little cake things). I must also express a personal debt of gratitude to “A”, a very devout Muslim who lives opposite. When I managed to catapult my car backwards from the drive, through a brick wall, straight across the road and into his nice VW, thus writing both cars off (don’t ask!) he was very gracious. It’s only metal, he said, and the most important thing was nobody was hurt. Good man. He did well on the insurance, I am pleased to say.

But there are also very clear demarcations and tensions. There have been race riots. A Home Office report blamed “deep rooted segregation with communities leading parallel lives.” Anyone knew that. Add in a few young hot heads on both sides and a hot summer night and you’ve got your riot. There are places where I used to play as a boy where it would now be unsafe for me to walk alone at night, and equally I am quite sure that if someone with an Asian background walked around a couple of areas I can name, he or she would be at risk of insult or violence. There are schools which are effectively segregated. Here is one Asian student on plans to merge two colleges which are respectively 90 per white and Asian, quoted from the local evening paper last week, voicing his objection to the plan:

“They [whites] don’t like us – we live separate lives”.

I think that he made a fair point. I think that a lot of the “white” community do not like “them” (it is a fair way to refer to the way people speak in private), but I think it goes both ways. The two communities get along, but they do not mix. There is no common social, cultural or religious point of reference that I can think of. The social point of reference in this town for the “white” population tended to be the pub or the Church, Methodist or Catholic (in the case of the Catholics, both). Not a good start, for obvious reasons.

It is an astonishing change in a generation, and it will continue apace. According to figures compiled by 150 NHS trusts for 2008-9, 69% of births in the UK were accounted for by “white British” or “white” women (although this may include Eastern Europeans), with the balance due from “Pakistani” “Indian” and other ethnic backgrounds (a significant 10% being “unknown”; Extra Terrestrial, perhaps). However, there is an additional factor that the ethnic population is concentrated in certain urban areas. At Sandwell and West Birmingham Teaching Trust, for example, the proportion of white mothers was just 16.5%. In Bradford it was 34%. Knowing Bradford a little, I am actually surprised it is so high.

The result is pockets of Britain where what is referred to as the “ethnic minority” population either has, or will soon outstrip what is called the “white” British population. The matter is compounded because statistically some ethnic groups have a higher birth rates than white British mothers. And then there is the issue of EU immigration. Under the previous Labour government net immigration added about 2 million people to population. Even though much of the migration may be from Eastern Europe and transitory, it is still a huge number.

I have to add a little bit of extra cynicism here, because there is the problem of illegal immigration, and in reality nobody knows who is living in Britain.

So where do we stand on integration and minorities? I can only speak from my personal experience and observation. My Irish forbears appear to have integrated seamlessly. I still drink Guinness and like “The Corrs” and go to Church, but that’s as far as it goes really. Now there is integration, but it is a peculiar form of integration. What is happening is an accommodation. On the surface most people just want to get along and like anyone else, they want a nicer house and a better car and to be left alone. To a degree, traditional British attitudes appear to be adopted by the “minority”; all three major political parties have strong ethnic minority links, for example. It may be that the seductive elements of “western culture” like pop music and “free-ish” sex will permeate the Asian community over time, and create a fusion. A proportion of Asian youths round this way, for example, seem to believe that they are heirs to “Gangsta Rap” culture, and whizz about wearing hoodies and blasting out that sort music from revved up hatchbacks. But my sense of it is that fundamentally the mosque still holds sway, the ties to Pakistan are strong, and that there is equally a risk of a strong Islamic backlash emerging. If you have trouble with a group of naughty Asian children playing in the street (I had to rescue an old lady last year who did) the threat of calling the local Imam works wonders. Another neighbour and much of his extended family seem to spend about half the year in Pakistan. The two daughters of the house both had arranged marriages there (I quote: “we went to marry one, and we thought we might as well get them both done at the same time.”)

It is also a Britain becoming segregated by area.

What I do find interesting from a political point of view is how, over the previous 30 years or more ago, the issue of race has been so carefully and fastidiously managed as to become that most un-British of things, a “thought crime.”

Over the past couple of years, various politicians have poked their noses into the debate, doubtless having picked up the vibe that there were either votes to be had, or more subtly, that votes were to be lost amongst certain sections of the community if they did not say something. Gordon Brown had a pathetic go, for example. They have done so with all the vim and gusto of a mouse poking its nose out from under the sideboard when it knows there are couple of large and particularly hungry Ginger Toms waiting in the room. Another peculiar point is the degree to which Our Lords and Masters seem to have positively facilitated the break up of a generally cohesive population, by whatever means necessary. Others have written more eloquently than I could ever do that there was almost the sense of the previous government treating the British population like a child being scolded by some vicious Victorian Nanny: You don’t want to eat up your multiculturalism? Well you’re jolly well going to keep eating it till you do, so have some more! This was one of the things that was so odd, and so telling, about the “Bigot gate” debacle.

And it’s not a purely Labour. I can faithfully report that “iDave’s” call to allow Turkey to join the EU went down with the man in the street round here like the proverbial lead balloon. I find it odd how politicians imagine people are stupid; no matter what the government said, everyone at the pub foresaw what was going to happen once the door was opened to Eastern Europe. Equally, I find it odd that there has been such passivity amongst the population at large.

As long as I can remember it has been political orthodoxy in the United Kingdom that immigration was necessary, good, and that any questioning of either – on whatever grounds – was indelibly the mark of the racist or the bigot.

Is it racism or bigotry to be concerned if a national culture and identity is to be changed without consultation?

An odd view, particularly from the Left, because it is clearly the white working class who feel that they suffer most in the face of competition for jobs, housing and services. I speculate upon it, and can only reach the conclusion that there was some paroxysm of intellectual guilt based on the legacy of Empire. Or perhaps to destroy a society was always was fundamentally “conservative?”

I wrote in an earlier piece on this blog that the Romano British Monk Gildas would have railed against a policy which essentially delegated important national interests to immigration; in his day it was defence. The defence against barbarians was delegated to the Saxons, and the Saxons found the place very much too their liking. In ours employment in certain economic areas. He appreciated that the ultimate effect could be to entirely overthrow the existing social order. He believed that race and religion were real factors in how a society is defined and operates, and of the character of that society.

To adopt an analogy provoked by another of Anna’s recent posts -“Utopia Unplugged”. The drive to multiculturalism on this scale seems to me to be based on a similar kind of Utopianism to that which tried to shoe horn people into high rise flats or the desperate concrete estates in the 1960’s. That contravened not simply every rule developed over about 10,000 years of history about how architecture works, but about how people actually want and need to live and how real communities are created and sustained. It was the intellectual orthodoxy divorced from common sense; criminally awful in practice. Of course, the people that created such follies never lived in them.

Over the next generation we shall see in certain areas of Britain, the biggest change in the culture and character of Britain since the coming of the Viking; that is as far as I can tell, a mathematical and historical fact. It will change Britain forever, just as they did, and perhaps more profoundly still.

Who then shall be the minority, and who shall be integrated with whom?

Gildas the Monk

{29 comments }

BrianAugust 12, 2010 at 11:38

Belay that, they’ve just reappeared.

BrianAugust 12, 2010 at 11:37

What happened to all the comments?

Furor TeutonicusAugust 12, 2010 at 08:22

XX Over the next generation we shall see in certain areas of Britain, the biggest change in the culture and character of Britain since the coming of the Viking. XX

Really? WAS that such a large cultural change?

Remember the Sachsen had been here since just about the end of the Roman occupation. In fact, as you nearly pointed out, it was the Brits tht invited the Sachsen to Britain to act as mercenaries against the Romans. A great number of whom, at that late period, were Sachsen/Thuringian mercenaries ANYWAY.

It was 4 to 500 YEARS later that the Wikings arrived.

The Wikings were so much “first cousins” to the Sachsen, that MOST of them were related by family ties from “back home. Particularly in Denmark with the Jutes and Sachsen there. Even after all that time.

(O.K battling first cousins. But fighting over who should have the T.V control does NOT constitute a major ethnic divide in your house any more than them fighting over which King ruled what, did then).

The religions were almost identical, the customs, laws, culture. It was no more “an invasion”, than your Granny coming to stay for a week is “an invasion”.

If you wish to go for “largest cultural change”, then the Romans. Even then, their religion was VERY similar. The “Cultural differences” amounted basically nothing more than “technology” and law. Also, as I said earlier, the Later “Roman army” was in fact mostly Sachsen, West Rheinisch, and Th

john malpasAugust 12, 2010 at 00:39

From the outside it seems that the UK has become rather stalinist.With a police force ernestly dedicated to stamping out any desire to protest against immigration especially of the pigmented. This is backed up by the media. With their refusal to designate who is rioting & or committing crimes etc. MONA and the like.It all sounds like some vast whimisical experiment perpetrated on the inhabitants who were never really consulted.

BrianAugust 11, 2010 at 23:16

I quote from Gordon Ramsay’s instruction on the Channel 4 website describing how to make mayonnaise:

“The key to a successful mayonnaise is making sure each drop of oil is thoroughly whisked in before adding the next drop. The consistency will change and the colours get lighter as add more oil.

Be careful not to add the oil too quickly or the mayonnaise will split/curdle. To correct this mix another egg yolk with a little mustard and slowly whisk this into the split mixture. It should re-emulsify. Continue adding the rest of the oil according to the recipe.”

Before the last half century, immigrants slowly trickled in, mingled and bonded with the autocthonous population and helped create something better than the separate ingredients.

English VikingAugust 11, 2010 at 21:46

The word ‘racist’ has been so appallingly over-used and incorrectly applied for so long that it has lost all meaning to anyone who is able to think for themselves. (Now, they really are a minority).

I no longer care if people consider me a racist; in fact, if by racist you mean a person who thinks that there are discernible differences in the races, I am racist. If a person who believes that some cultures are immeasurably superior to others is a bigot, I am a racist bigot to boot.

I can see a civil war, but not of the kind that people imagine. Not the sort where two opposing factions go at each other until one side loses, but the sort where the entire country is engulfed in violence, some organised, most sporadic and erratic, carried out by dozens of disparate groups. No-one will be fighting for a cause, just their own back-yard. The Gov will lose almost all semblance of maintaining Law (for what use that is now) and Order. Parts of the armed forces will either refuse orders or become rogue. The Police will be used to protect the rich and powerful. Virtual citadels will arise (we are almost there on that one now). Food shortages, disease, unchecked mayhem, communications cut, power cuts for weeks, economic collapse on an unimaginable scale.

Even if this scenario is false, Sharia will be a reality in a country where White British will be an ethnic minority status in less than 35 years, given the current demographics. This could happen in 35 days if Turkey becomes an EU member.

We are not experiencing ‘difficulties with integration’. We are being colonised, and all objections fall under the ‘racist bigot’ heading I explained above.

I spend a lot of time out of the country. I genuinely believe what I have written above, and have taken steps to at least have an escape route. I was asked recently if I missed England, and I replied ‘Yes, very much’. ‘Why don’t you go back then?’ my friend asked. ‘Because it doesn’t exist any more’, I replied.

I have never understood why the left views wanting to live and grow old in the world one was born into as such a terrible thing,surely it is just a natural wish to be surrounded by an enviroment and people both familiar and mainly benign?

Ancient and Tattered AirmanAugust 11, 2010 at 20:50

I am over 70 years of age and I can truthfully state that before I went to college I had never even seen, much less ‘met,’ an ‘ethnic’. Yes, Cornwall was backward in the 1950s (in the eyes of many) but I note that many of the white fugitives are moving down here and causing the locals all sorts of problems by doing so. I am thinking of house prices driven up to levels the locals can never afford and schools closing through declining pupil numbers because the incomers are mostly retired.

Nick2August 11, 2010 at 20:46

The first question is ‘how much immigration is too much’? Nobody in power has ever publicly addressed that point. Except, maybe Enoch Powell (who may have been talking about ‘no’ immigration).

The second point re Eastern European immigration in the past 10 years is that Nu Lab were IMO motivated not to impose restrictions by the allure of being able to say that there were no restrictions; That immigration would provide opportunity to economically deprived ex commie Europeans, and that free movement throughout Europe was paramount. If they ever considered the disruptive impact that mass immigration would have, they may have thought that the Poles etc would only compete for the ‘unwanted’ jobs in the agricultural sector. And maybe work for minimum wage, adding to the competitiveness of the economy.

The third point is to do with assimilation. Previous waves (eg Jews excaping Russia) did make serious attempts to integrate rapidly – my father’s family took English names when they arrived here, and only ever spoke English, even at home. I don’t see anything like the same attempt at integration these days.

Without a clearly defined immigration policy (and that must include EU citizens from other countries) and an expectation to integrate, the UK’s social cohesion is likely to fragment further.

Looking a bit further down the road, when we, the indigenous are the minority, what will happen to our cultural artwork? The Muslims find western art insulting to their religion and will want to destroy it, shouldn’t we sell it while we can? Anyone want to buy a laughing cavalier?

HorshamiteAugust 11, 2010 at 19:49

I enjoy your posts, particularly those in period.

I don’t have an answer to multiculturalism v integration but I have always been impressed with the USA’s ability to absorb different cultures that can be both proud – and celebrate – of their heritage (eg Greeks or Italians) yet be as fanatical citizens of their State and Country as any.

Do you have any thoughts as to why we seem to have been less successful in post-war Britain?

Perhaps because, despite the malign influence of the progressives, the Americans remain truly proud of their heritage and history?

After all, they recite the pledge of alleigence every day in school. Assuming, that is, they still do that?

Gildas the MonkAugust 12, 2010 at 06:10

Thank you HIn some ways I think the UK has been successful. As I say, mostly people just want to get on. But I think, briefly, that the US has always had a “melting pot” culture with the iron rule that you became “American” first, whereas here there seems to have been a positive goal of preventing integration.G the M

Ed PAugust 11, 2010 at 19:30

What a disaster multiculturalism has turned out to be. Multi-ethnic societies within a common culture are strong, cohesive and generally trouble-free: I believe most people in Britain thought that was the intention of Labour’s pet project. Instead we have separated & alienated communities, some now little more than ghettos, and no obvious or easy way to resolution.My SE dormitory town, 100% white in the 60s, is slowly changing as those that can afford it move here (and that includes East Europeans). There’s absolutely no problem when it’s one house in ten that’s non-native-white occupied. But at 1 in 5 the “locals” start to become worried. Give it ten years and the ratio could be 1 in 3, with the inevitable tensions following. Personally I have no objections at all – as the ethnicity mix alters, so do the shops and restaurants, giving more local diversity. All the “new” people I’ve met are pleasant, fairly well-off, speak English adequately and may follow some religion of which I know nothing, but so what. I know the SE is probably not representative of your northern town experience, but it shows, if there’s some “light touch” local management & guidance, integration is achievable.

Gildas the MonkAugust 11, 2010 at 19:20

Thanks for sensible comments and observations.This is a difficult and sensitive topic .Gildas the Monk

Sarbanes OxleyAugust 11, 2010 at 18:51

intellectual orthodoxy divorced from common sense = Architecture

BobAugust 11, 2010 at 18:50

The future for our British children and grandchildren is frightening. They WILL be a minority.

I remember when it was (and still is) popular to make a big issue against any irresponsible person who begat more than 1.2 children.… “The planet is dangerously over populated and the birthrate MUST be brought down by positive and action. To save the future of mankind irresponsible people must be stopped.”……Stated often enough this becomes a core belief.

I have no time for such nonsense, however IF I did believe it, the problem is that such restraint has only been followed by judeo/christian cultured white fools. Small families are the norm for us.

Does the same birth restraint occur in Islamic families? Not in a million years.

“Is it racism or bigotry to be concerned if a national culture and identity is to be changed without consultation?”

You cannot integrate one culture within another without there being problems. Whilst it may take many generations to bring about the change politicians seem to want – that result being in doubt as far as I concerned – in the meantime ‘ghettos’ will arise and racism will flourish on both sides.

One only has to look at the British Empire and see that, eventually, people wish to be left on their own and to their own way of life. Yes they will tolerate visitors and the wealth tourism brings to their country, but they do not want mass immigration.

I speak as someone who spent many years in West Africa and saw the damage to their societies that the imposition of an alien culture did to them.

backwoodsmanAugust 12, 2010 at 09:07

Ditto India, where I spent many years – riots kick off with predictable regularity. Allowing Muslims , who bring no discernable benefits to a society, to establish themselves here, shows the true stupidity of the left leaning political class.

Joe PublicAugust 11, 2010 at 18:07

An awful lot of politicians owe Enoch Powell a groveling apology.

EleanorAugust 12, 2010 at 06:06

I’ll second that. But most of us were too afraid to say so at the time.

Henry MorganAugust 11, 2010 at 18:05

In your experience, how integrated are people by civil war?

I doubt if I’ll live long enough to see it start, but it’s coming anyway.

AlanAugust 11, 2010 at 17:06

“Another peculiar point is the degree to which Our Lords and Masters seem to have positively facilitated the break up of a generally cohesive population, by whatever means necessary. ”

A cohesive population doesn’t need mediators, facilitators, busybodies and representatives acting as go-betweens between ghettos, cultures and religions. The last thing our betters want is for us to all get along. They would have no authority to leverage in return for votes and money.

faulksdAugust 12, 2010 at 09:27

Agreed! These bar stewards thrive on conflict. Their country cousins did a great job in Rwanda and in the Balkans, didn’t they?

faulksdAugust 11, 2010 at 17:04

Thanks for the article, Gildas. I enjoyed reading your reflections (and reminiscences) on the subject at hand. In my own experience I can trace the first moves in this direction to the 60s, when Kenyan and Ugandan Asians were given the open door. Quite a few came to our grammar school, and had to be specially coached in English. The trickle has subsequently become a flood, as we know so well.I don’t know what drives politicos to allow this kind of ‘social integration’, but there’s certainly an awful lot of it about; the French have their Algerians, along with other groups from their former colonies, the Germans have their Turkish ‘gastarbeiter’, and there are diverse ethnic groups in Sweden, Denmark and Holland. This forces me to conclude that is a global policy. Who’s driving it? I have my own ideas. Of this I’m sure: it’s intended to erode national and cultural identity and to ease in the big communitarian solution by the usual means of the Hegelian conflict trick.